DALLAS - Brittany Chambers was named the
inaugural Scholar-Athlete of the Year in the Big 12 Conference. You would
expect player majoring in pre-med to make heady plays. And that's what the
senior guard did.

Chambers assisted on two consecutive
baskets to help the Wildcats forge a tie and then scored the game-winner with a
buzzer-beating layup as No. 8 seed Kansas State knocked off No. 9 seed Texas,
51-49.

The Wildcats advance to face top-ranked
and No. 1 seed Baylor (29-1) at 1:30 p.m. Saturday in a quarterfinal game. The
Lady Bears defeated K-State, 90-68, Monday in Waco. Baylor's Brittney Griner,
who scored 45 in a quarterfinal victory over the Wildcats last season,
surpassed that with 50 in the most recent meeting.

All the quarterfinal games and the
remainder of the Championship will air on FSN.

Kansas State (15-16) called timeout with
10 seconds remaining and in possession of the ball in the front court. Chambers
inbounded the ball, started to head for the 3-point line but read the defense
and cut back door for the pass and the game-winner. Chambers said the play
didn't unfold as it was designed.

The officials consulted the court-side
monitor to confirm Chambers' shot was good. For Chambers, the time it took for
the instant replay check was about as long as the ball bounced around the trim.

"The last play of the game, I for
sure thought I missed it," she said. "It would have haunted me for the rest of
my life. It felt like it was on that rim for ten minutes, it was terrible."

"They made two consecutive plays
down the stretch that I thought just kind of caught us ball-watching, they went
back door on us," Texas coach Karen Aston said. "I think personally a lot of
(our players) were expecting a 3-point attempt."

Chambers is the first
guard and the third Kansas State player to score 2,000 career points (she has 2,005).
She also became the school record holder for most points in a senior season
with 627. She has at least one more game to add to those totals.

Chambers, Haley Texada (who is from nearby Frisco, Texas) and Chantay Caron combined for 49 of the K-State's 51
points. Chambers recorded a game-high 20 points and tied White with nine
rebounds. Texada scored 15 in the first half.

"We had talked this season about games
where we only really competed tough-minded for 20 minutes," Kansas State coach
Deb Patterson said. "I feel like the last four games we have played, we have
really bought into that 40-minute mentality, that teams are going to come at
you, you have to stay tough-minded."

In splitting the regular-season series
by trading 19-point victories, perhaps it was fitting for this game on the American
Airlines Center court to come down to a final shot. Kansas State, which has
just seven players in its rotation and no player taller than 5-11, prevailed by
grinding for the full 40.

"It's so tougher to lose a game this way,"
said UT's Imani McGee-Stafford, the Big 12's freshman of the year who scored 15
points but missed 13 of 20 shots . There are so many things that run through
your mind that you could have done personally to combat what happened."

Texas shot itself in the foot because it
couldn't make point-blank shots. The Longhorns missed 19 layups, follows,
drives or post ups. That contributed greatly to 33.8 percent shooting and bled
over to the defensive end.

"Young players, sometimes they miss
layups, point-blank shots, they get discouraged," Aston said. "We stopped
playing play to play and that led to some transition baskets for K-State,
especially in the first half."

The Wildcats have relied on the
3-pointer to offset their lack of height and depth. Against UT, they launched
30 and made 8. That gave K-State a 21-point edge as the Longhorns made just one
3-pointer in five attempts.

Kansas State was 10-of-19 on two-point
baskets and had 15 assists on its 18 field goals ... including assists on its
final three baskets as the Wildcats closed it out with an 11-4 run.